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EFF and the ACLU of Southern California each sent California Public Records Act requests to the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department seeking documents about each agency's use of Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) systems—sophisticated cameras mounted on squad cars and street poles that read license plates and record the time, date, and location a particular car was encountered.

Location-based information like license plate data can be very revealing. By matching your car to a particular time, date and location, and then building a database of that information over time, law enforcement can learn where you work and live, what doctor you go to, which religious services you attend, and who your friends are.

Given the sensitive nature of this data, EFF and ACLU-SC wanted further information on how the agencies were using the systems. The organizations asked for documents relating to policy and training on ALPRs, as well as a week’s worth of ALPR data collected by the agencies in 2012. While the sheriff and police departments produced some materials, they failed to provide documents related to sharing information with other agencies, and neither agency produced the data collected during the one-week period. After this failure to comply with the California PRA, EFF and ACLU-SC filed suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Law enforcement agencies around the country have been all too eager to adopt mass surveillance technologies, but sometimes they have put little effort into ensuring the systems are secure and the sensitive data they collect on everyday people is protected.
Case in point: automated license plate recognition (ALPR) systems...

San Francisco­—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) are urging California’s highest court to rule that license plate data, collected indiscriminately on millions of drivers by police across the state, are not investigative records and should be made available to the public. EFF...

The California Supreme Court today granted our petition to review the lawsuit filed by EFF and the ACLU of Southern California that seeks to shine a light on the collection of license plate data by the Los Angeles Police and Sheriff’s Departments. This comes just two days...